The primary function of a mobile phone is social: to enable the phone owner to communicate with other people. At the same time, though, using a mobile phone can be profoundly anti-social, especially to people in the immediate vicinity of a phone user. In restaurants, theatres and museums, on trains, or even standing in the supermarket checkout queue, there is no escape from chirping and bleeping phones, or from the sometimes seemingly inane conversations of their owners. Furthermore, in certain social settings, it is not appropriate to speak loudly when receiving or sending calls, for instance at a funeral, in a movie theatre, a business meeting, or a library. However, users do continue to allow their phones to ring audibly, and answer them. Often this behavior is not acceptable to other people in the vicinity. Mobile phone profiles are provided to allow users to set the phone to a mode such as “Meeting” or “Silent”, where the ring will be attenuated or even silenced. However, having accepted a call, the user may converse normally (even loudly), thereby potentially offending other people in the vicinity.
Law enforcement and public campaigns can be effective when the user is ignorant of the anti-social consequences of the phone call. In reality, many people are already aware that a phone call in a public space can disturb others and in most cases they try to conform to a situation; the bigger problem is that the voice level increases due to other reasons, and the user is unaware of it. As the user tries to concentrate on the conversation with a person who does not share the same environment, the volume of his/her voice often becomes louder. It is particularly the case when the user is unfamiliar with electronics or has a sense of unreliability in mobile phones (as compared with fixed phones); they feel that their voice will be heard better if they speak loud. As a whole, such a consideration to “be heard on the other end” can be also cognitively demanding, as it takes so much attention from the user. The user can easily ignore the environment, environmental changes, and the surrounding people. For instance, the caller might not notice that the voice that was at an appropriate level on a station platform may be suddenly found too loud when stepping into a train compartment.
The issue is raised often in an urban society where people are densely populated and spending most of the time next to someone else, mostly strangers. In Japan, where both social etiquette and mobile phones are taken very seriously, train and metro companies make an announcement in compartments to turn the silent mode on. However, this type of solution is unenforceable and by far is not enough to solve the problem. More comprehensive solutions are described below.
Solution 1. Installation of a profile switcher: in Korea, the government performed trials for two kinds of devices that can be installed in places where silence is required: a device that blocks the network, and another device that changes the phone profile to silent mode automatically. The network-blocking device was found to be illegal, therefore, the profile-switching device will most likely be the device used. However, this solution is highly dependent on the infrastructure. It requires a device that automatically changes the profile to the corresponding mobile phones. If the user does not have a specified mobile phone or goes out from the range of the device, the situation cannot be fixed.
Solution 2. Social Mobiles (SoMo) Concept (IDEO): IDEO has designed a prototype “social mobile” which has the intent of modifying the user's behavior to make it less disruptive. The concept, called SoMo1, gives its user a mild electric shock, depending on how loud the person at the other end is speaking. This encourages both parties to speak more quietly; otherwise the mild tingling becomes an unpleasant jolt. Although the SoMo1 concept does consider the caller's voice level, it is only effective between callers on the phone. The concept does not consider how the other people around the caller find the voice level.
Solution 3. Mobile phone profiles are provided to allow users to set the phone to a mode such as “Meeting” or “Silent”, where the ring will be attenuated or even silenced. However, having accepted a call, the user may converse normally (even loudly), thereby potentially offending other people in the vicinity.
None of the solutions described above are adequate. It is desirable to find an alternative solution, which will not require additional infrastructure and which will give the user a chance to notice their misbehavior by themselves before they are pointed out by a third party. Such a solution is disclosed in the present invention.